Richard Smith and Julie Adams

From Bach to Beatles
and barn-burners to ballads

Passion is guaranteed, when world renowned fingerstyle
guitarist Richard Smith and cellist Julie Adams join forces

Can you imagine a full orchestra playing in your living room? Or two lovers flirting
in a symphony hall? It's a little bit of both that you get from world renowned finger-
style guitarist Richard Smith and his wife, versatile cellist Julie Adams – and they
serve so much more.

The combination of Richard’s fretboard fireworks and Julie’s warm tone and lyrical
style will melt your heartstrings, have your toes tapping and your jaws hanging
open. Their ever growing repertoire comprises a wide variety of music from classical
Bach to Beatles pop. It includes Scott Joplin Rags just like Sousa marches, Chopin,
Mozart and fiddle tunes. It ranges from jazz standards to Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed
and to Django Reinhardt gypsy swing, not to mention their intriguing originals. Richard
and Julie deliver both, lightning fast barn-burners and beautiful ballads, occasionally
spiced with gentle and witty vocals.

Their incredible stylistic wealth is founded in a lifelong love for music. Born in
Beckenham, Kent, England in 1971, Richard started playing guitar at age 5 under the
instruction of his father. Concentrating initially on the country picking of Chet Atkins
and Merle Travis, young Richard digested everything he heard, learning even
the most complicated of these tunes with ease, and confounding everyone with
his dexterity. It seemed that not only did he possess amazing physical skill, but a
photographic musical memory as well. Often, a single hearing was all it took to get a
piece under his fingers, using all ten to play bass, rhythm and melody simultaneously
and creating a universe of sounds, while easily switching between thumbpicking
and flatpicking like hardly anybody else.

Richard first met his hero, the “Godfather” of fingerstyle guitar, Chet Atkins, when
he was only eleven. Richard was invited by Chet to share the stage with him at Her
Majesty’s Theatre in London in front of an audience of 1,000. At first, the master accompanied
him, but later on he just listened in stunned silence while the child
played Chet’s own arrangements – perfectly. By the time Richard reached his early
twenties, both Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed began to refer to him as their “Hero”.

It's no surprise, that the hymns of praise subsequently never faded. Richard has
toured the world as a solo artist, with his brothers Rob and Sam as the Richard
Smith Guitar Trio and with his swing band, The Hot Club of Nashville, featuring Stu


art Duncan on fiddle, Pat Bergeson on guitar and Charlie Chadwick on bass. Fellow
guitar wizard Tommy Emmanuel prefers Richard Smith as one of his favourite duet
partners. In 2001, Richard became the National Fingerstyle Guitar Champion in
Winfield, Kansas. He has been a mainstay at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society
Convention in Nashville since 1991, where he has played with many world renowned
artists including Nato Lima of Los Indios Tabajaras, sax legend Boots Randolph and
John Jorgenson of Desert Rose Band and Elton John Band fame.

He has also performed with other great musicians such as Marcel Dadi, Tommy Tedesco,
Thom Bresh, Joe Pass, Biréli Lagrène, Bryan Sutton, Les Paul, Mark O'Connor,
Sam Bush, Martin Taylor, Jorge Morel, Suzy Bogguss, Muriel Anderson, Guy
Van Duser, Béla Fleck, Victor Wooten, Tony McManus and Buster B. Jones and shared
the bill with a host of others, most notably Steve Morse, Albert Lee, Paco Peña,
Barney Kessel, David Russell and Johnny Hiland.

1999 turned out to be a further milestone for Richard Smith in both his life and
career, when the British gentleman married the lovely and accomplished American
cellist Julie Adams and settled in the Nashville area. Julie is one of the most diverse
cellists on the music scene today. Raised in Dayton, Ohio, and classically trained at
Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Cincinnati Conservatory, she has won many
competitions and played in the most diverse musical settings. In 1996, Julie was selected
to perform the Dvorák Cello Concerto with the Cincinnati Conservatory Orchestra.
Since then, she has performed with orchestras in Chicago, Columbus, Dayton
and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Vero Beach, Florida.

Julie has also branched into folk music, playing a significant role on Glenn and Holly
Yarbrough’s album “Family Portrait”, produced by well-known fingerstyle guitarist
Muriel Anderson. Julie and Muriel then teamed up to release their own duet CD titled
“Theme for Two Friends” and toured extensively throughout the US. At home,
Julie is a sought-after session player and has been featured on top ten albums as
well as major film scores such as the soundtrack of the box office hit “Bridget Jones's
Diary” in 2001 and Suzy Bogguss' contribution “Oh! M